Love

Started on April 2nd, 2026
Finished on April 4th, 2026

Hey. So I'm burnt out. And it feels like I'm burnt out on everything in my life. Definitely my job. Definitely my feelings. And if I'm being honest, I'm burnt out on music. That includes both Froggy Nights and my band, Dollars, Taxes. It sucks for sure, but I am. Reflecting on it now, I think the issue is that it all feels like a job. And the problem with the issue is that I might be the one that is assigning the job-like feeling to it. I also might not be. I can't tell.

Wednesday was a hugely emotional day for me, and it resulted in good things. My friend helped me realize that a lot of the feelings I've been having are purely internal. I have OCD, and my brain has twisted so many assumptions and forced me into believing that they were true. It also has kept me scared of communicating these feelings so it could feed the deep-seated belief that my friends actually hate me. I also had a conversation with someone that very much needed to happen, and this conversation helped free me from a shackle I had put on myself. Both those descriptions are fairly vague, but what I am getting at is that I have been causing problems for myself, and my brain had convinced me that these weren't problems in the first place.

I wrote those first 2 paragraphs on Thursday. Today is Saturday. I felt like I had a lot to say and a lot to unpack on Thursday, but I ended up hanging out in my friends' backyard and having a very nice night. It's definitely what I needed most. It has been serving as a point of inspiration for how I'm trying to live going forward. I won't be perfect at it, but I can strive to live this way.

One of the things I am actively working on is trusting my intuition. I'm just trying to act on my first thought without second guessing it until I learn when I should and shouldn't rethink things before taking actions. I like doing tarot readings for myself and a huge point of focus in tarot is trusting your intuition. I've been doing tarot since 2022 and I still don't know how to trust my intuition. But on Thursday, I texted my friend asking him if I could hang out in his backyard, he said yes, I second guessed it and almost changed my mind, but then actively chose to go with my gut instinct. And the result was having a night I really badly needed.

Another thing I'm working on is recognizing how much of a privilege it is to take care of things I love. Pictured here is my perfect little lady Joey. It genuinely hurts my heart to think about how poorly I have been taking care of her in spite of how much I love her. I had a moment with her yesterday that had me choked up for the rest of the day. I fed her some crickets, gave her a nice bath, and spent time with her just sitting next to me on the couch. I had a very strong realization about what it means to love a pet. Loving her means the I get to care for her. Doing the things for her that makes her life good aren't chores, they're leisure activities. And the result of these activities is giving this pure and adorable little creature a wonderful life.

I'm also working on expanding my awareness of the things I love. There are a number of things I know that I love because I talk about loving them, but my actions don't reflect that. By being more aware of my love for these things, I will care for them and embrace my love for them more. Two things embraced my love for today were my apartment and my neighborhood.

I moved into my apartment in August. Up until today, I still had half a room that was not being used at all. It was just a stack of cardboard moving boxes, a wooden bench covered with things I had no place for, and a folded up table. I moved the boxes to my closet, I moved the bench next to my door for shoe storage, and I set the table up in the free space. On the table I put my cassette player, which also did not have a place yet. All of a sudden, I unlocked another room. I could open the blinds and let the beautiful sunlight fill the space. With just a little bit of care, I was able to express my love for my apartment more.

I also knew that I loved my neighborhood, but I haven't been using it the way that I could. I sing its praises and talk about how walkable it is to people, but really all I've been doing is walking to the grocery store closest to me and walking to one bar. Today, I went on a true walk through my neighborhood. I walked to the post office to drop off a letter I've been putting off sending, and then I walked to a thrift store a pretty good distance away. On the way to the thrift store, I saw so many shops and restaurants I did not know existed, and all of these places are easily accessible to me. It's like I was clearing the fog on the minimap of my life. On the way back from the thrift store, I went into a pizza place and just got a slice of pizza, which at face value is not an astounding feat, but when you had FORGOTTEN THAT WAS SOMETHING YOU WERE ABLE TO DO, it is absolutely life changing. I also watched the last few minutes of a high school basketball game on the TV which was pretty cool. On the way back from the pizza place, it became abundantly clear to me that I love my life. I just hadn't been living the life that I love. I have all the tools and resources I need to live the life I love, I just hadn't been using them. I don't think my OCD was letting me. It's been holding me back, but it has such a strong grip on me that I didn't know it had been.

So what else do I love that I just didn't know about? I love my friends, I love my lizard, I love my apartment, I love my neighborhood, I love my life, what am I leaving out? What is being blocked from my loving vision? It's obvious now that I have broken this all down for myself. What is being skipped over is the very thing that holds all this together. Me. I love myself. I really do. I actually fully do. I've been writing it as a daily affirmation for a few weeks, but I've been breaking it down on an analytical level. How I've been justifying it is saying that I have qualities I would like in another person, therefore I like myself. QED. But believe it or not, this purely logical approach hasn't sunk into my highly emotional brain. But as I have been learning, I am the glue that holds the love together. I am the person that feels the love. I have been doing things for myself to express this love that I feel for myself, but I haven't been recognizing it as love. But it is love. It's been love this whole time. I have loved myself for a while now. It's breaking my brain a bit to have this realization.

I just have so many memories of things that I regret. A few times a day, my OCD flashes me one of those memories and it feeds the belief that I hate myself. It's happened to me at least twice while typing this. But that thing that I hate is not me. I hate the thing that is flashing me those memories, but it's so good at its job that it has me genuinely believe that it is me who I hate. I've had a few times in my life where I realize this, and I've given it different names, and eventually it wins again and I forget that it isn't me who is poisoning me. I fall back in the hole. But I want to be done with all this. I love myself. I will not forget that I love myself. I wouldn't want to do any of this if I didn't love myself. But I do. I love myself.

This is a long one. But it's an important one. This is one that I want to come back in read when I forget that I love myself. I didn't end up even touching on the burn out. I talked about something entirely different. Whatever. This is genuinely more important. Alright that's it. It's over. We're done. I've been typing for more than an hour. And I did it. I got it all out. Phew. Well I'll talk to you later. Thanks for reading.